Cloud Engineer
Princeton University5 days ago
Princeton, NJ, USASenior
Base Salary
$72k - $77k/yr
Responsibilities
- Design, deploy, and maintain Azure cloud infrastructure for research and production environments, with responsibility for reliability, performance, and cost-effectiveness.
- Architect and manage Databricks workspaces, AKS clusters, Azure networking, storage, identity, governance, and containerized workloads.
- Implement reproducible infrastructure-as-code using Terraform and/or Bicep, including modules, remote state, version control, and pull-request workflows.
- Administer Azure Blob Storage, Private Link, network rules, RBAC, secrets, cost controls, budget alerts, anomaly detection, and FinOps practices.
- Build and maintain backend services, APIs, data pipelines, internal tooling, and CI/CD pipelines using Python, TypeScript/Node.js, and GitHub Actions.
- Develop and support pipelines for large-scale behavioral and social media datasets and infrastructure for ML workflows, model serving, and experiment tracking.
- Implement security, encryption, access management, network segmentation, audit logging, vulnerability remediation, and compliance controls for sensitive research data.
- Operate Grafana, Loki, and Prometheus observability infrastructure, including dashboards, logs, metrics, alerting, tracing, patching, and upgrades.
- Own incident response, root cause analysis, operational reliability, runbooks, architecture documentation, and technical specifications.
- Provide technical leadership and architectural guidance while working independently on complex and ambiguous infrastructure and software problems.
Requirements
- 5–8 years of experience in cloud engineering, DevOps, or software engineering with significant infrastructure ownership.
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field is preferred but not required; equivalent professional experience is accepted.
- Strong proficiency in Python and experience with an additional language such as TypeScript/Node.js or Go.
- Deep hands-on experience with Azure compute, networking, storage, identity, managed services, landing zones, subscription governance, and resource management at scale.
- Proficiency with Terraform, including module development, remote state management, and pull-request workflows; Bicep familiarity is preferred.
- Experience designing and implementing CI/CD pipelines, preferably with GitHub Actions.
- Production experience operating Kubernetes/AKS clusters, including deployment, scaling, health management, upgrades, and cluster operations.
- Solid Docker and container image management experience in production environments.
- Knowledge of Azure networking and security, including Private Link, network rules, NSGs, RBAC, and secrets management.
- Experience with Azure cost management, budget alerts, cost and cluster policies, anomaly detection, and FinOps practices.
- Experience with Databricks or equivalent large-scale data processing platforms.
- Understanding of data security, IAM patterns, and compliance frameworks such as SOC 2, HIPAA, or ISO 27001.
- Experience operating self-hosted observability systems such as Grafana, Loki, and Prometheus.
- Ability to work independently, navigate unfamiliar code and infrastructure, communicate technical decisions clearly, and produce documentation and runbooks.
- Preferred qualifications include research computing or academic data infrastructure experience, MLflow or Hugging Face familiarity, IRB-compliant data experience, React or equivalent frontend experience, and relevant Azure certifications such as AZ-104, AZ-305, or AZ-400.
Benefits
- Part-time, 20 hours per week, benefits-eligible position.
- 12-month term appointment with an estimated appointment end date of September 30, 2027.
- Remote work within the United States may be considered for candidates with the appropriate background and experience.
- No overtime eligibility; 180-day probationary period.
- The role supports meaningful technical ownership within a small, high-trust team serving a global academic research consortium.
Tech Stack
AzureDatabricksDockerGitHub ActionsGoGrafanaKubernetesMLflowNode.jsPrometheusPythonReactTerraformTypeScript
About Princeton University
Princeton University is a private Ivy League research university that provides undergraduate and graduate education and supports research across science, engineering, humanities, and social sciences. Its operations are funded by tuition, sponsored research, and a large endowment, and it engages industry through technology transfer, licensing, and corporate partnerships. Founded in 1746 and headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey, it maintains extensive campus IT and research infrastructure to support teaching, discovery, and administration.